7,000 signatures for QEH petition + GP surgery letter to CEO
Thank you to everyone who has signed and shared our petition to protect services at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital (QEH) in King’s Lynn.
We have now passed 7,000 signatures. That is a powerful demonstration of just how much our hospital and its services matter to people across West Norfolk and the surrounding area.
Concern is also being raised by local healthcare professionals. A local GP practice has now written directly to the Chief Executive of the hospital seeking urgent reassurance about the future of services at QEH. A copy of this letter can be seen below.
GPs see every day how important it is for patients to have access to safe, effective hospital care close to home. Their intervention adds further weight to the growing calls for clear answers and reassurance about what the future holds.
We will continue to press for transparency and for firm commitments that the services our communities depend upon will be protected.
Please keep signing and sharing the petition. Every signature strengthens the message: local people care deeply about the future of QEH, and their voices must be heard.
More than 7,000 people have already spoken up. Let’s keep building that momentum and make sure decision-makers understand just how strongly our community feels about protecting services at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital.
Finally, huge thanks to Local Free News who met with me to talk about the hospital and the services we fear are at risk. Facebook video outside QEH
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Dear Professor Dwyer,
Re: Future clinical configuration of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, King's Lynn
I am writing on behalf of …..GP Practice regarding the current work on the future configuration of acute hospital services across Norfolk and Waveney, and in particular the implications for the Queen Elizabeth Hospital (QEH), King's Lynn.
We are increasingly concerned by reports that options under consideration may include significant changes to adult critical care, the Emergency Department, maternity and emergency general surgery at QEH. We recognise the public statement that no final decisions have yet been made. However, that statement does not answer the questions that clinicians and the population of King's Lynn and West Norfolk now need answered.
To be clear, we are not simply asking whether a decision has been made. We want to know what is being considered, why it is being considered, what evidence supports each option, what the clinical consequences would be, and how the population served by QEH would be affected.
We therefore ask that each of the following questions is answered specifically and individually. A general response that "no decision has been made" would not be an adequate answer to these questions.
1. Is removal or downgrading of Level 3 adult intensive care/critical care at QEH currently being considered? If so, what precisely is being considered, why, and what level of critical-care capability would remain at King's Lynn?
2. Is replacement or downgrading of the current 24-hour consultant-led Emergency Department being considered? Will the replacement QEH retain a 24/7 consultant-led Emergency Department capable of receiving and treating undifferentiated emergency patients, rather than an urgent treatment centre, minor-injuries service or stabilise-and-transfer model?
3. Is removal, downgrading or significant centralisation of consultant-led maternity and obstetric services being considered? Will QEH retain 24-hour consultant-led obstetrics, emergency Caesarean-section capability and the necessary on-site anaesthetic, theatre, neonatal and critical-care support?
4. Is removal or centralisation of 24-hour emergency general surgery being considered? Will emergency surgical assessment and emergency operating remain available at QEH, rather than patients routinely having to be transferred elsewhere for definitive treatment?
5. Has the review formally assessed the clinical interdependencies between Level 3 critical care, emergency medicine, anaesthesia, emergency surgery, obstetrics, paediatrics and neonatal care? If Level 3 critical care were removed or downgraded, which other services would consequently have to be reduced, transferred or redesigned?
6. What modelling has been undertaken of additional travel times, ambulance availability, inter-hospital transfers and time to definitive treatment for patients across King's Lynn, rural West Norfolk and the wider QEH catchment? Please publish the assumptions and results.
7. What assessment has been made of the ability of NNUH, James Paget or any other proposed receiving hospital to absorb activity transferred from QEH, including emergency demand, inpatient beds, theatres, maternity activity and critical-care capacity?
8. Will the Group publish, before recommendations are finalised, the review's terms of reference, clinical and specialty representation, evidence base, original long-list of options, appraisal criteria, scoring methodology and any options subsequently rejected or shortlisted?
9. Has a preferred option, emerging model, shortlist or recommended direction already been identified, even if it has not yet reached the stage of a formal Board decision? If so, what is it?
10. Has the clinical specification, Target Operating Model or Schedule of Accommodation for the replacement QEH changed, or been proposed for change, as a consequence of this work? Specifically, have planned ICU beds, Emergency Department capacity, operating theatres, maternity facilities, neonatal facilities or inpatient bed numbers changed?
11. Will you publish the current Schedule of Accommodation and the relevant clinical design assumptions for the replacement QEH, together with any earlier version against which changes can be identified?
12. Can the Group give an unequivocal commitment that the replacement QEH will remain a fully functioning District General Hospital with 24/7 consultant-led A&E, Level 3 adult critical care, consultant-led obstetrics and 24-hour emergency general surgery? If it cannot, please state specifically which of those services are currently considered uncertain and why.
We would also like clarity about the underlying model being proposed. If the Group is considering a configuration in which a substantial population is served by a hospital without the core interdependent acute services traditionally associated with a District General Hospital, please identify the established NHS precedent for that model and the evidence demonstrating that it is safe and effective for a geographically dispersed population such as West Norfolk.
If this would represent a materially new or untested approach, we believe the Group must explain why the population of King's Lynn and West Norfolk should effectively be used as the test population for it. Major structural changes should not be introduced first and justified afterwards. The evidence, comparators, risks and alternatives should be available for scrutiny before the clinical model is narrowed or embedded in the design of the new hospital.
What our patients and local clinicians have reasonably understood the New Hospital Programme to mean is the replacement of QEH with a modern, fully functioning District General Hospital for King's Lynn and West Norfolk. What we are asking for is exactly that: a genuine replacement DGH with the acute services necessary to function safely as an integrated hospital - not a fragmented collection of services or what could, in practical terms, amount to a glorified cottage hospital in a new building.
We fully support sensible clinical integration, collaboration between hospitals, expansion of community care and changes supported by good evidence. Our concern is that these should complement a properly functioning acute hospital for West Norfolk rather than be used to justify removing the clinical infrastructure on which that hospital depends.
Given the importance and urgency of this issue, we would be grateful for a substantive written response addressing each numbered question separately, together with publication of the supporting information requested above.
Regards
…….